Reed disaster

I have a show tomorrow, playing one short piece my son wrote for a creative music competition. So it kinda matters, it's all solo and it'd be nice to not suck, and I'd been working a pretty good reed for it, G11. The piece goes all over the place, starting with low Bb1, and hitting C4 later, and I need to compete against his rather vigorous piano playing in all registers. So it's not an easy piece for a reed. I'd been trying to get a little more response, a little more brightness, and also clean up a moderately bad top/bottom assymmetry. A touch off the front of the heart, trying to smooth the side profile, seemed to help. And how bout a bit from the back to help those low notes... A bit here, a bit there... And bam. The middle C#, C#2, in the staff, dropped, turning into a C-natural. Eeeyeah. And I lost the ability to hit C4 securely. If a high E or D# won't speak on a reed, I'll forgive it, no serious biggie, but a C is not that high. There's no real help here but to clip back the tip, to bring the reed's internal pitch up again. My first clip went askew, and after I'd gotten it straight, the reed looked awfully short, about 24.5mm collar to tip. It feels very small in my mouth, like it's amputated. And while it does kind of play, it's nevertheless too stiff in the tenor range, doesn't speak all that well low... and if I fix those things, I worry I'll get stuck where I was before.

Not sure what I'll do. I have a couple of other reeds, G5 and G7, which are both playable. Neither are as good as G11 was just before I screwed it up. Guess I'll decide tomorrow what to do.

Added. I played on G5, which was my concert reed in the last couple of weeks, before I was finishing G11. I took a bit of the back, hoping to let the low notes speak a little more freely, but basically tried to leave it alone, having fewer and worse backups left. As it turns out, we got to play the piece twice, since the adjudicator hadn't received the full score and needed more time to get familiar with the music before judging it. Different mistakes each time, an odd squawk here and there, but I got through it. I played standing too, my first time performing that way. I found it not easy, since the instrument is less balanced than when seated, but it's nice to be able to move. And oh yeah -- the piece won.

Added again: Here's audio, with a new cloud audio system.

Moose in Love by TFox17

Environmental effects

I had an interesting experience in the impact of weather on reeds, something I guess I've heard of, but hadn't really believed. I'd practiced yesterday morning, and my reed (G5) was behaving. But the day was hot, reaching +33 C in the afternoon. Here that often brings rain. I had a rehearsal in the evening, and we heard thunder, and rain came through. And my reeds were terrible. Fuzzy, difficult to make respond. They turned funny shapes too, and closed down. I switched to G7, which is a little lighter, and that helped a bit, but I struggled through the whole rehearsal. My sinuses felt stuffed too, whether that's due to the playing or the weather I don't know. This morning is cooler, overcast, but with a muggy, oppressive feel. I feel like I'm in Europe, London or Paris or something. Or San Diego, which often felt this way. But that's what the weather looks like, why would it affect the reed?

Here are some plots of weather conditions over the past day.









The rain began around the start of my rehearsal at 1900, right in the middle of these plots. The shifts in temperature, wind and humidity are substantial on these scales. The pressure, which seems like a natural candidate to impact acoustics, doesn't change all that much, going from 100 to 100.5 kPa, a 0.5% shift. The humidity, on the other hand, changed from 20% to 70%, which is more than a factor of 3. So is it the humidity? Dunno. It's not obvious to me how that would work. After all, the reed gets fully saturated with water when it's soaked, so why would a slight shift in external humidity change its shape or properties? Or would it be due to the humidity in the air column of the instrument bore? That air is all exhaled breath, which I'd think is generally saturated with water vapor regardless of the external humidity. Curious.

Other bassoonists

There was a bassoon gathering set up at the university by a local pro this weekend. I was looking forward to it, but with some trepidation. This would, after all, be my first impression for many of the serious players in town. I played in the opening recital, a piece my son wrote. I think people liked it, mostly from the novelty of new music, plus the father-son story and the fact that he's a kid. I didn't play it particularly well, missing a bunch of attacks and having at least one giant out-of-control squeak. The pianist did a credible job, though, with no rehearsal. After the recital there were ensembles. This began a little confused, since there were divisions by skill level, which we were supposed to organize ourselves. Since the "intermediate" room looked rather full, I ended up going into the "advanced" room, which started rather empty, but ended up with a senior performance major, another local pro, and me. I picked the third part on everything (Weissenborn trios, something I can't remember, and a Take Five arrangement) and did my best to keep up and not get lost, even when I was splatting every low attack and muffing every run. It was a ton of fun, even if I was low man on the totem pole, and I felt that playing with people better than me immediately made me sound better. Maybe that's just because I got to listen to their playing, but hopefully I was adjusting and leveling up a bit too. What they thought of me I have no idea, everyone is always extremely polite, but for better or worse, I've now made my first impression.

Louchez 5

Full disclosure: there's a cut in this. The take that had a decent feeling of being in one had a terrible second half, even worse than this. So I redid just that part, and spliced them together. Still not as good as I can hear in my head, but I'm a flawed, flawed person, and maybe I just need to learn to accept that.

Gaga medley

What Eastman students do for fun...

Klezmer clarinet

I found this video awhile ago, the artist is amazing, what he can do with a clarinet.


Klezmer is very expressive, and somehow, all the sounds come out: laughing, crying, sighing, smiling, and sobbing. How was a mystery to me. Then I found this video, which is a how-to. Apparently, with the right mouthpiece, you can get the big bends required. I wonder how much you could bend on a bassoon.

Louchez 3 and 4

Not perfect, but time to keep moving. Reed is G5, recorded on the iPod, with my thumbtack mike after it went through the wash. The first one didn't survive that trip, but this one seems to still work fine.

What a vibrating reed looks like

I've long wondered what exactly reeds look like in motion, and how exactly does the various scrapes affect their behavior. If you look at the reed-making literature and traditions, there are many views, most of which share little in common. You'd think the study of acoustics ought to be able to help, and maybe it can, or has for some, but I haven't figured out how yet.

One clue may come from a classic undergraduate physics demo, the Chladni pattern. The coffee cup image shows a kind of Chladni pattern, formed by shaking at 20 Hz. I've found similar patterns by dragging a filled styrofoam cup across a smooth surface, setting up a slip-stick motion.

Classically, Chladni patterns are formed by putting sand on a thin plate (say, a violin top or back) and vibrating it, by . The sand collects along lines where the plate isn't moving, which is to say the nodal lines of the mode. These patterns are actually useful to violin makers, who can assess the symmetry of their carving, and adjust the frequency of the modes by examining these. The lines separate regions which are moving up from ones which are moving down. The pic here is taken from the great acoustics site at UNSW, and corresponds to mode 7 of the violin back.




If sand on node lines is too low tech, well, you can always play with lasers. Picart and friends made some kind of fancy laser interferometry/digital holography contraption, which allows the visualization of not just the nodal lines, but also the full 3d deformation of the vibrating structure, time resolved if desired. They applied this to a clarinet reed, with the images seen here. They've also used these to study all kinds of things about clarinet reed motion, which might be very interesting if I could manage to decode their paper. One thing is clear, though. The clarinet is the best studied reed instrument, among other reasons because the reed's natural vibration frequency is very high, which reduces interactions between the reed's resonances and the air column's. The very lowest frequency in the pictures is 1880 Hz, which is about a Bb6, essentially out of the usable range of the clarinet. So yeah, even for the highest notes on the clarinet, the reed should just flap open and closed, without getting all contorted.

Characters of the different keys

Here's a list of the romantic affects ascribed to the different keys, from an 1806 book, taken from http://www.wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html. These days people usually claim all keys sound the same, because equal temperment gives every key the same pitch relationship between the notes, but of course that's not true. Pitch is absolute as well as relative, and different keys put the pitch center higher and lower in the hearing range. Also, for real instruments, different notes just plain sound different, especially on the bassoon. So different keys are really different. Of course, if you'd like to emphasize the differences, you can do some reading, and pick some suitable unequal temperment.

C Major
Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naivety, children's talk.

C Minor
Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.

Db Major
A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.--Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.

C# Minor
Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.

D Major
The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.

D Minor
Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.

Eb Major
The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.

D# Minor
Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depression, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.

E Major
Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.

E minor
Naive, womanly innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the pure happiness of C major.

F Major
Complaisance & Calm.

F Minor
Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.

F# Major
Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief uttered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.

F# Minor
A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.

G Major
Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.

G Minor
Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.

Ab Major
Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.

Ab Minor
Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.

A Major
This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one's state of affairs; hope of seeing one's beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.

A minor
Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.

Bb Major
Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.

Bb minor
A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.

B Major
Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.

B Minor
This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones's fate and of submission to divine dispensation.